How to Stop Putting Pressure on Myself?
145. How to Stop Putting Pressure on Myself?
Are you struggling with being single and putting a lot of pressure on yourself to meet someone?
Or are you just starting a relationship and feeling a lot of pressure to get it right as a couple?
Or maybe the relationship isn’t going well, and you’re putting a lot of pressure on yourself to find a solution right away.
Having worked with over 600 people, I know this is a common situation. This episode will give you tips to help you let go of that pressure
It’s Not the Situation That Creates This Pressure
It’s the perception, or the story you tell yourself, about this situation. If I take the three cases I mentioned in the introduction to illustrate this:
- If you tell yourself “I never meet anyone interesting, it never works, nobody likes me”, it’s normal that you feel pressure. If instead you tell yourself “It’s normal in the dating process to have flops and successes; by taking time to review how I’m going about it and creating enough opportunities, the meeting will happen”, I think you can feel, just by hearing this sentence, that there’s a little less pressure.
- Same thing for the second case: if you tell yourself “I have to get everything right or the relationship will fail, or he’ll leave”, that creates more pressure than telling yourself “I have the right to make mistakes in a relationship, and just because I don’t get everything right doesn’t mean the relationship will fail.”
- Same thing for the last case: if you tell yourself “I have to solve the problem right now or the relationship will end”, that’s more anxiety-inducing than telling yourself “Well, having conflicts in a relationship is a normal process, it’s even healthy.”
You can see that in these cases the situation hasn’t changed, but it’s the perception you give it that sets the tone for the pressure you feel. The good news is that even if it’s not necessarily easy, you can consciously set your pressure level by changing your perception.
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Your Pressure Level Is Driven by Your Nervous System and Your Past
If you’ve already tried making positive affirmations and felt like it didn’t work, you’ll find your answer here. Simply because your perception and the story you tell yourself are influenced by your past experiences, which themselves have shaped the dominant state of your nervous system. So, in fact, the perception you have isn’t really an assessment of what’s happening in the present moment, but rather glasses from your past through which you interpret your new interactions. My invitation to you is to see this pressure you feel as an indicator of the state of your nervous system. In the case of pressure, it’s often the activation of the sympathetic state that puts you into panic mode “I must”, “I have to”, and where you often end up fleeing or fighting. And ask yourself which aspect of your family or personal history this situation is reactivating. A simple way to do this: if I take the first case I mentioned, “I must meet someone”, to understand the threat behind it, if you don’t meet anyone, finish the sentence “I must meet someone, OR ELSE…” “I’ll end up alone, I’ll never be loved…” And then ask yourself if this threat is 100% true. Taking the example again, if you don’t meet anyone, will you really end up alone? Well, no — you have your friends, you have your family, and even if you don’t meet anyone right now, that doesn’t mean you won’t meet someone later.
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Go Through Your Body
When you feel this pressure, your nervous system is in survival mode — it’s useless to try to reason with yourself in this state.
To regain your full capacity to reason and reflect, you need to return to your state of safety.
I suggest a small exercise to do when you feel this pressure.
When you have this pressure, try to name the body sensations you feel — the shape, the color, whether they have movement, warmth, where you feel these sensations when you have this pressure:
- Is it your head buzzing and you have ruminating thoughts?
- Is it internal agitation, a kind of impatient movement?
- Is it more like a vice grip on your shoulders, at heart level?
There’s no specific sensation for pressure — everyone experiences it differently — so take time to identify your own sensations.
Then remember a moment in your life when you managed to have enough distance to think and act at your best without being overwhelmed by pressure. Recall that moment — how old were you, where were you, see the scene, feel the scene — images may come back to you, sensations, you may remember the warmth, the smell of the surroundings, remember that feeling of mastery, of pride at being able to think and act without being overwhelmed by this pressure that’s there but doesn’t invade you. Remember all the steps you followed in your thinking, in your action, and how you managed to take action despite this pressure. Remember the body sensations you felt in that moment — being in your power, being aware of the situation, of the pressure, but managing to act without being overwhelmed and so finding the best solution for you. Where do you feel these sensations? Is it at heart level? Sometimes it can be a kind of warmth; at the solar plexus level, sometimes you can feel a kind of yellow ball of power; is it in your legs, your feet, where you feel this strength and this grounding at the same time?
And now come back to the body sensations where you felt this pressure. Do you notice a change in your feelings? Have they decreased, is there an easing, or even a total disappearance?
If you feel an easing of these sensations, or even a total disappearance, you just experienced the pendulation process — that is, the passage from a state of insecurity to a state of security in your nervous system.
What you just experienced is an emotional-regulation tool — you can listen to episode 122 How to Regulate Your Emotions for more advice.
Going further
Unpacking the influence of your past on your romantic relationships, understanding what triggers that pressure, and learning how to support yourself when that pressure arises in a relationship—all so you can experience more peaceful relationships—is what you’ll learn in the Opening Up to Love program. You can choose the Option Day of the Past, a day of Somatic Deprogramming: a mind-body practice designed to deprogram the nervous system’s automatic responses and reprogram new relational reflexes.
S'ouvrir à l'Amour
Le livre qui va te permettre d'identifier tes schémas amoureux et te permettre d'apprendre les clefs pour construire une relation saine
Sandy Kaufmann
is a somatic therapist and coach, based in Switzerland. She is the author of two books published by Éditions Eyrolles and has accompanied more than 600 people. She is the creator of the Somatic Deprogramming method and hosts the podcast ” S’ouvrir à l’amour“, ranked in the French top 50 in the relationships category.
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